Just a few years ago, studies proved the often speculated fact that Hollywood stars are getting older and older. No, this does not mean that people are aging the way people always do, but rather that Hollywood is not cycling new stars in and out like they used to. The people who were stars ten years ago are the same people who are stars now.

Obviously, this is a problem. You don’t want to manufacture an even age distribution, but rather a natural one. It would make more sense that there would be a disproportionate amount of young stars, as people like seeing movies with younger (and thus more attractive) people in them. The question that keeps being raised time and time again is why, then, the Hollywood age is getting older.

People have theorized that some contributing factors are the rise of franchise movies, the death of the movie’s place in the culture as a whole, and the rise of social media which makes it so that the Hollywood stardom has less mystique. These factors all seem to be valid reasons to me. However, I want to add a new factor to the mix that nobody seems to be addressing: the loss of talent. 

I am not saying that there are fewer talented actors today. In fact, none of the studies I found can definitively prove that there are fewer working young actors. There are, however, fewer young stars, and that’s where the lack of talent lies. The best stars have some sort of intense charisma that is impossible to ignore; I think that this comes across more in the oldest of actors (say Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn) but it also comes across in the older stars that hang in there today. This charisma is more muted in the young actors of the ’90s, but it isn’t nonexistent the way it is for actors of today.

To give an example, Robert Downey Jr. has become a household name thanks to his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even before he was Iron Man, he was praised for his style of acting back in the 1990s in much smaller movies. The same could be applied to Tom Cruise, who was just as much of a star in “Magnolia” as he was in “Mission Impossible.” Emma Thompson was very charismatic on the small screen in the underrated TV show “Years and Years” from 2019, but she had no more star power in “Years and Years” than she had at the beginning of her career. The question to be gleaned from all of these examples is: Where are the current young stars? Well, hypothetically on TV. 

I actually think that TV shows have been getting cinematic to the point where clear star power does shine through. I have been more than impressed with the performances I have seen younger actors give in TV shows. However, I love these performances more for their humanity, and less for their undefinable charisma. There always has been and always will be insanely talented actors who have nothing to offer in terms of stardom (think Michael Caine or Philip Seymour Hoffman). So, there is just a gap, in my opinion, of younger actors who have the talent of actually demonstrating charisma on screen. 

Since there is less intense theater training for realistic acting now, perhaps this carries over to a specific lack of stars: Actors are just no longer training to be stars. This way, my final new factor can connect to all the other factors. The movie has lost a place in culture as a whole, as the rise of social media sees stars competing with influencers, franchises ruling the movie theaters, and TV shows taking over our attention. There is simply no reason for actors to develop that intense charisma that makes them stars. Maybe our stars of today are looking to different careers where they can use their talent for other means. Either way, the talent is nonexistent—so there is not a problem with too many older actors getting jobs, but rather younger actors being at all good enough to compete in the first place.

 
Henry Kaplan is in the class of 2028 and can be reached at hrkaplan@wesleyan.edu.